"Crows in Evening Glow"

Crows in Evening Glow

Listen to Henri Cole reading this poem. The terrible glorious crows are convening again, swooping into the area with triumphant caws, plunging with demon black wings from utility poles, kicking and pecking a neighbor's kittens. Wearing the plaid shirt that was my father's plaid shirt, I throw a tarp over a pile of clear pink hemorrhaging garbage bags. See a crow, take three steps back. Three crows cried, someone has died. Go home, Crows! I holler, My black-lipped daddy is gone. Poor crows, perplexing as men, nobody is listening to their tired signals, not even the mother, with blue drooping breast, nursing a newborn under a red maple with a nest.

Henri Cole's most recent book is Touch, which received the Jackson Poetry Prize. He teaches at Ohio State University.